The presence of hip-hop culture has recently been highlighted by campus events including the Coffeehouse performance by Kat, a spoken word poet, as well as the student organized dance production, “Cinderella”. These reminders are representative of the hip-hop culture that is interwoven into the lives of many Whitman students.

“Hip-hop shows are really well attended,” said senior Stefan Ducich, the ASWC public events chair. As the person in charge of booking musical entertainers that ASWC sponsors, Ducich has made several efforts to bring more live hip-hop music to campus.

“There were three attempts to get hip-hop shows onto campus but they did not work out due to logistical and financial reasons,” said Ducich.

Ducich said that there is a strong draw towards hip-hop music on campus, but that this strong interest is often underrepresented by students on campus.
Sophomore Kate Greenberg, a student who recently preformed in the “Cinderella” dance production, and has lead Winterim hip-hop dance workshop in her first year said, “I would love to have more [hip-hop] on campus.”

“There are three kinds of people on campus: people who don’t know anything about hip-hop, people like [hip-hop] but don’t know much about it, and people who like [hip-hop] but tend to keep it to themselves,” said Sophomore Stephanie Gil.

According to Gil, the first kind of people often don’t like hip-hop, or fear it because it is so foreign to them. The second kind is confused about hip-hop because they know so little about hip-hop other than commercial mainstream music. The third kind is typically more reserved since they don’t want to impose their music onto other people.

Gil has shared her passion for hip-hop as the DJ of Black Student Union hip-hop dances, recently performing in the dance production “Cinderella” and by leading Winterim hip-hop dance workshops for two years in a row.

Most people have their individual definition of hip-hop.

“Hip-hop to me is about rhythm, what makes me move the most, what really gets me going,” said Greenberg.

According to Gil, “Hip-hop is more like poetry, the expression of oneself, one’s emotions . . . hardships.”

“[Hip-hop] gives me a kind of inspiration, it can help you motivate yourself . . . to know people went through hard times that you went through,” said Gil.
Greenberg puts a bigger emphasis on the passion and movement inspired by hip-hop music.

“Hip-hop gives you whole hearted expression. . . the rhythm of music and the rhythm of my body, come together in a synergetic way . . . it’s about how it makes you feel” she said.

“People feel restrained to move to hip-hop,” Greenberg said of a number of Whitman students. “I think the moves are complicated . . . people have never learned to move in the way we move for hip-hop.”

At Whitman, there are often various connotations associated to hip-hop. “To some, hip-hop means booty shaking . . . [hip-hop] is associated to MTV” said Greenberg.

“Hip-hop is really one-sided . . . it’s all focused on the mainstream. . . [and] mainstream hip-hop isn’t hip-hop anymore,” said Gil. “When hip-hop first came out it dealt with more political issues . . . old school hip-hop had something to say.”

The mainstream images used to sell hip-hop like “booty shaking, grinding on people, drugs, money, [and] degrading girls [give people] negative views of hip-hop” said Gil. “The artistic value of hip-hop has gotten lost in money.”
Gil offered hip-hop artist MIMS single “This Is Why I’m Hot” which includes the lyric: “I can sell a mill saying nothing on the track,” and Nas’ 2006 release, “Hip-hop is Dead” as examples that highlight this dichotomy between contemporary and old school hip-hop.

“It’d be nice to talk about [hip-hop] . . . get some of those conceptions out of the way,” said Gil.